Bryan Singer is about to tackle yet another X-Men movie for release in 2016, but after that, he might stay in the world of sci-fi for a different sort of film. 20th Century Fox has just picked up the rights to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, based on a novel by legendary sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein. It’s unclear if Singer would direct or produce but Marc Guggenheim (Green Lantern) is writing the script for the adaptation, which will be retitled Uprising.

The 1966 novel has come close to becoming a movie a few times but rights recently reverted back to Heinlein’s estate. Fox then swooped in to grab the property. Read more about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress movie below.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress movie. Here’s the book description from Amazon with a ton of good info:

Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, “modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean.” He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work.

It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people–a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic–who become the rebel movement’s leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution’s ultimate success.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of the high points of modern science fiction, a novel bursting with politics, humanity, passion, innovative technical speculation, and a firm belief in the pursuit of human freedom.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the winner of the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

For modern movie audiences, Heinlein would probably be best known for as the author of Starship Troopers, a book that Paul Verhoven loosely adapted to film back in 1997. But as the Amazon description says, in the sci-fi literary world, he’s simply one of the best.

In the past, both DreamWorks (with Pirates of the Caribbean writer Terry Rossio attached) and Phoenix Pictures (with Harry Potter producer David Heyman attached) have attempted adaptations but failed. What, if anything, has changed now that Fox and Bryan Singer are on board remains to be seen. But the director couldn’t even get to this movie if he wanted until the middle of 2016.

Have you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Is Bryan Singer the right person to direct? What about the title Uprising?